Powdered surfactants are used in a variety of industrial and commercial applications. Examples include powder paints and coatings, pigment powder premixes, adhesives, water treatment additives (such as for waste-water and boiler water treatment), agrochemicals, detergents, oilfield applications, metalworking, polymer processing, extrusion molding, aqueous re-dispersible powders, polymer dispersions, paper processing and coatings, textile applications, and foundry coatings. Typical conventional powdered surfactants include either a single component or a blend of one or more of a hydrocarbon oil, a polydimethylsiloxane, a fatty alcohol ethoxylate, a fatty acid ester derivates, a polyglycol, and a polyether. In some cases a particulate carrier such as silica is used as a support for the surfactant component.
Powdered surfactants have been used in a variety of powdered cement building material products, for example dry mixes for preparing grouts, pre-cast concretes, jointing and adhesives compounds, synthetic plasters, and self-leveling mortars. In particular, they have been increasingly used in formulations for making bare finished (i.e., having a bare cementitious surface) cement structures for structural building elements and also as decorative elements for the construction of architectural panels, retaining walls, flooring, tiles, sound barriers, paving, and for self-leveling underlayments. For many of these applications, formulations are desired that, upon mixing with water, provide mixes that have good flow and self-leveling properties, provide a sufficiently long processing window (“open time”) to facilitate working the mixture, provide adequate long lasting de-aeration efficiency throughout the initial setting time of the mortar composition, and provide durable and attractive bare concrete surfaces.
The addition of certain other components to cement mixes sometimes results in a variety of undesirable effects which the powdered surfactant may help to overcome. However, conventional powdered surfactants typically suffer from one or more drawbacks in such formulations, and thus there is a need for new free-flowing powdered surfactants having a good combination of properties for use in cements and other applications.